How to fight theocracy...
And win.
I wanted to draw the attention of people on Daily Kos to the way in which they are shooting themselves and their chosen cause - the political resurgence of the American left and, with that, beating back the push for theocracy - in the foot or even in the leg.
You don't go to a fight unarmed when your opponent is waiting in the OK Corral with a Colt .45, sure.
Well, you also don't go to that gunfight with Tourette's such that your inadvertant, twitchy spouting of curses pulls your trigger to accidentally shoot yourself in the leg.
It's a problem, in a gunfight, when you're gushing blood from a self inflicted gunshot wound, and you've got a REAL problem if additionally you've nicked a Femoral artery.
But, let's back up from the OK Corral for a bit and leave Wyatt Earp to fester and get cranky. We need to practice our quick-draw and our aim for a bit first. Earp's a damn good shot.
Further, this metaphor of the political struggle between the left and the theocrats - as a gunfight or maybe a bar brawl - is fundamentally cracked.
This isn't that sort of fight, with weapons or fists...
[ update : for further treatment of these themes, see Frederick Clarkson's new post at
Talk to Action ]
Update 2: Tom Frank does a nutshell summation of this post. I liked it, so here goes:
"The wackjob leaders of the religious right don't accurately represent a lot of American Christians. If we convince the average Christians that the wackjob leaders represent an unappealing Other, we win. If we lump average Christians into a pejorative category, we lose.
That's it. The people who think we should give Robertson a 'pass' completely missed the point. If anything troutfishing....is arguing that we aren't attacking them enough. If we're spending energy criticizing Christians as a whole, that''s energy we're not spending pointing out what's wrong with the nutjobs who are leading them astray.
"
- I'd add, to that, that people on the left invest a good deal of energy attacking each other as well. Silly, that.
Meanwhile...
We need a campaign of skillful persuasion:
A campaign to persuade some of those 100 million Americans who call themselves evangelical Christians or born-again Christians they should side with a left-progressive agenda rather than with the theocratic right.
Slinging rhetoric - in this very public forum - which informs those 100 million Americans that they are extremist, ignorant, or flat out dumb is akin to going to the OK Corral with a Colt .45 while Wyatt Earp waits in a pillbox with a machine gun and an RPG.
Folks on Daily Kos who attack the theocratic right with language that accidentally brands a large group of Americans who do NOT support theocracy are like trial lawyers with Tourette's, blurting out obscenities during their closing statements in murder trial.
"extremists", "wing nuts","dumb bastards" ?
Karl Rove is chuckling and rubbing his hands with glee.
What terms should we then use in this fight, what rhetorical weapons ?
Well, why not use language that peels Americans off from that bloc which has been voting for the Republican Party now taken over by self-avowed theocrats ?
Pursuade Christians away from the theocrats.
Call those theocrats "Religious Opportunists" or "Religious Supremacists".
Inform Americans precisely who those theocrats are and what their extreme agenda is.
Stoning for adultery ? How's that going to play in Kansas ? Not well, and it's up to people on Daily Kos to let Kansans know that they have been voting for politicians who advocate smashing their fellows Kansans to a bloody pulp, with rocks,in the public square.
Children of the Corn, indeed, but those children are NOT Kansans. The Children of the Corn are the theocratic right. They are Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" come hideously to life as they advance their bloodthirsty agenda that seems far from Christian.
It's up to folks on the Daily Kos to remind Kansans - who are mostly Christians - that Christianity is most centrally based on love, foregiveness, and tolerance : not on an atavistic manicheanism which seeks public stonings.
Think about it. The rhetoric of the theocratic right should have been- and can be - a precious gift to Daily Kos and the left.
Violent, extremist rhetoric. A gift and weapon - unless the left joins, in its clumsy fashion, in that game. But the right has been honing its technology of vilification for decades. That technology has been honed in focus groups and on the ground practice. And, that is the low road way, the path of hate.
Does the left, and the Daily Kos, want to go to THAT fight, with a Colt .45 when the opponent is dug into a trench and waiting with a .50 caliber machine gun ?
Sun Tzu says - don't play that game. It's a set piece battle weighted heavily in favor ofthe theocratic right, and so if the left enters that field of battle it will be mowed down in a bloody slaughter and will flee in a rout.
No. Don't enter than field of battle.
Be smarter. Redefine the terms of combat.
Let American Christianity know - convince them - that the theocratic right has stopped being true to Christianity and has been advocating an agenda that has close to nothing to do with Jesus Christ's teachings.
Convince Christians away from the theocratic right. That should be easy... But not when people on the left are talking of "wing nuts" and "religious extremists"...
Enter Chip Berlet. [from Talk to Action ]
Polls show that most people in the United States do not agree with the narrow legislative agenda of the leaders of the Christian Right. Polls also show that most people think of themselves as part of an organized religion, and that as many as 100 million of our neighbors think of themselves as Christian evangelicals or "born again." Why would an organizer start out by offending half their potential audience with language that is abrasive?
We need to challenge conservative policies as part of a progressive grassroots organizing effort based on civil and constructive dialog. The whole idea of grassroots organizing is to reach out to people who may not already think they agree with you. As a community organizer, when I heard discussions about slogans, I always asked: "What's my next line?"
Let's role-play. So here I am knocking on a door in Emporia, Kansas, and when the door opens I lead with "We have to stop the religious political extremists!" What's my next line? (That's assuming my nose wasn't broken when the door was slammed in my face). Unless the person already agrees with me, there is no constructive next line.
I think it's time to stop using phrases such as "religious political extremist" and "radical religious right." A lot of my friends and allies use this language, but what are friends for if they can't tell you when they think you are wrong?
Given that the theocratic right is advocating stoning for adultery, the disenfranchisement and violent persecution of various minorities, and an agenda overall which seem to have very little to do with the Christianity we know of from key Gospel teaching such as Jesus' Sermon on The Mount, can't we use those extreme and apparently anti-Christian positions to political advantage ?
Of course we can:
The theocratic right seems to want to have nothing to do with The Sermon on The Mount although that has traditionally been identified as, as much as anything, as shaping the core of Christian precepts, and we can whup their asses with that reality : whup them with their own words.
Indeed, if one can judge by the professed positions of the theocratic right, by their hateful vilification of other Americans and their calls for violent persecution, one would would guess them to be something other than Christians. For their language and positions one might guess the theocratic right to be not Christians but, rather, Machiavellians, Straussians, or perhaps "Old Testamentists"....
Some have suggested calling the theocratic right "religious opportunists" or "religious supremacists": those are very good terms especially if they are used judiciously to peel Americans away from that narrow group which is the theocratic right.
Most Americans do not support the theocratic agenda but - as evangelical Christians or born-again Christians - have been recently voting with the theocratic right as much for the fact that they have been alienated by the rhetoric of the left as anything.
And,I'm here to blame the left. No - I'm here to advocate for a better, smarter way :
If Karl Rove were on the left, he would be here - with Chip Berlet and the others from Talk to Action - preaching this smart path. He'd be reading Sun Tzu and telling you this :
Don't be dumb. You'll be mowed down on the battlefield. Don't even enter that field or play the theocrats' game. Redefine the terms of combat to turn your foe's strength to a weakness.
The theocratic right has learned the political craft of language par excellence while the left has forgotten that craft and so been reduced to mumbling, twitching, and cursing...
It is as if the left has developed a sort of Tourettes' Syndrome so that - in the presence of that key constituency of 100 or so million Americans who the left needs to begin to persuade,or re-persuade - for many of these were well persuaded of this until recently - about the value of a progressive agenda which values humans in a way which is...well...Christian....but, before those 100 million the left begins to twitch and curse, leaving those Americans offended and aghast.
This is a war of words, and a war of persuasion : in that war, it does not do to curse or toss out broad-brush labels that stick to our potential allies
There seems to be an unecessary and false dichotomy entrenched in people's minds such that many on Daily Kos believe it's necessary to vilify people on the theocratic right in order to fight them.
Well, unless that vilification is administered with surgical precision it will - to use the words of GrandMoffTexan from the Daily Kos - "hit aunt millie in the rosaries" and so play into the game of the theocrats and their rhetorical terrorism.
Many people who are pulled into the orbit of the theocratic right are within its gravitational field due to circumstances completely outside of their control, circumstances such as poverty.
Go to the infamous Blue State/Red State map, and then cross reference with income levels...
Surprise, surprise : Red Staters are poorer than Blue Staters.
Some of the language I've seen used on Daily Kos this week - as people have become worked up into a frightened frenzy about the advance of the theocratic right - works rhetorically as a broad brush which lets Red Staters know that Blue Staters think they are dumb
That's a political fiasco. Please, get a grip.
There is another, better way to play this
Read Sun Tzu, read Chip Berlet, read Talk to Action
"
1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.
2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided. The preparation of mantlets, movable shelters, and various implements of war, will take up three whole months; and the piling up of mounds over against the walls will take three months more....
6. Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field."